Editor, Times-Union:
It took 250 years to build a nation that was the envy of the world. It took four months to tear it down. Countries that once admired, envied, and emulated us … countries that had our backs and gave their support and spilled their own blood defending us in our times of need … now unite against us in fear, disappointment, and disbelief. Countries that once were our greatest adversaries now laugh at us and relish our downfall and weakness. America is no longer first in anything; it is alone.
Thousands of our best and brightest, our guides for a future of well-being, freedom, good health, and prosperity have been tossed aside without warning or cause. Millions of hard-working, god-fearing citizens and future citizens are now living in doubt, desperation, and deep concern … not knowing when or how their lives could be destroyed by diseases once thought eradicated or stolen life savings once thought secure, or overturned personal freedoms once thought indelible.
Our nation’s laws and our individual rights of due process are being ignored and tossed aside in deference to the whims and preferences of a dictator and his genuflecting cult of oligarchs. One by one the established groups of “legal eagles” who swore to uphold our Constitution and the rule of law are caving to the demands of this cult and promising to tend to its needs and obey its commands.
The three branches of our government that for centuries were, for the most part, successful in keeping a system of checks and balances working is now unrecognizable. One man, accompanied by only strict loyalists, and controlled by the wealthiest of the wealthy, now determines what is to be the law of the land, who shall enforce those laws, and how those laws shall be enforced. One man who spews only lies and hatefulness has easily taken the reins of leadership into his own hands, has proclaimed himself to be the all-powerful, all-knowing, only one who “can fix it” savior of America.
And yet there are those who still think all is well with their world. They are enjoying the pain inflicted upon those they were led to believe were the cause of their hardships and failures. They are applauding the restructuring of a country they were told was taken over by evil forces. They are giddy with the permission they have been given to consider themselves the perfect, chosen ones who can without guilt call out, ridicule, and destroy those who are different from them in any way. They can, without reservation, now worship the “golden calf” they literally have created.
When might you be targeted? You who are non-white, or tattooed, or elderly, or disabled, or LGBTQ, or a woman, or needy, or homeless, or not a millionaire, or deemed a criminal, or a non-citizen …. When might you find yourself snatched off the street and put into a prison in a far-away country? Should you be looking over your shoulder?
All this greatness in just four months!
Jeanne Tuka Schutz
Winona Lake, via email